Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Argh Ink

I’ve had it with Anthony Bourdain. Yes, he’s funny and he’s a terrific writer, but he’s also an ill-informed hypocritical jerk. My least favorite comment from him was on Twitter:

“Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later.”

Yes, Paula Deen clearly deliberately developed diabetes so she could sell drugs. Oh, wait, you didn’t know she had diabetes and was fronting for a drug company? Okay, let’s start over. read more >>

So I woke up late today, read my e-mail, and found out that my interview with Sarah Wendell has provoked some controversy which means it’s only a matter of time before somebody posts somewhere that I did it on purpose to improve page views. This is because the internet is full of conspiracy theorists, conclusion jumpers, and general all round shallow thinkers, none of whom are us. (That’s a joke. I have to say that here because I’m going to get flamed all over the internet about five minutes after I post this, so it’s good to point out the jokes to the humor-impaired. Yes, that’s mean. New here, are you?) read more >>

Entertainment Weekly posted a list of “24 RomCom Cliches We’d Retire.” I’ve spent the past eight months studying romantic comedy at Popcorn Dialogues, the last twenty years writing romantic comedy, and the last forty-five years watching it, and I feel this is a topic I have some expertise on. So this is a list of 17 reasons why Entertainment Weekly’s thinking on romantic comedy is biased, sloppy, and often dumb, plus seven things they got right. Sort of.

24. The heroine works in the media.
I have no idea why this is a romcom cliche. The reporter on the trail of a story is a staple in fiction; see Russell Crowe in State of Play. Why should some jobs be off limits? Unless they’re thinking it’s weird women are in the media. No, they’re in the media, they can’t be that close-minded. Makes no sense.

23. The Last Minute Sprint aka The RomCom Run
This is practically a drinking game at PopD so this one I’ll agree with. read more >>

I posted a rant about Maureen Dowd’s op ed on romantic comedy over on PopD, and then it was suggested to me that I might want to address it here, without the easy shorthand of “We’ve been critiquing romantic comedy for nine weeks so I don’t have to tell you how to do it.” So this isn’t a rant, but it is still in response to the Dowd piece, a recasting of that rant for people who haven’t been watching romantic comedy with me for two months. I’m still annoyed as all hell at Dowd, but I’ve stopped foaming at the mouth.

If you’re going to do a serious, intelligent critique of a genre, you have to do more than say, “Oh, my God, it’s terrible, don’t you think it’s terrible? I think it’s terrible. I’m having such a good time saying it’s terrible with you.” You have to actually discuss the genre, explaining why you think it’s terrible, where you think it’s falling down, how it could be better. Otherwise you’re just a couple of Mean Girls sneering at actresses who probably don’t have that much input into the script (but Aniston and Garner are such easy targets or, as Snotty Guy in the op-ed says, “Anybody named Jennifer”) while you mourn the loss of the good old days when you had to walk five miles through the snow uphill both ways to see Bringing Up Baby and Annie Hall. This pretty much tells your reader that you know zilch about romantic comedy, but by damn you know what you like. read more >>